Zero Gravity
by Stars of Artemis
Summary: Azira Taylor doesn't care what heiress standards are; she's going to change the world if it's the last thing she ever does. But when a certain sonic jet crashes in the forest, her plans get complicated, and then things really start to get interesting...
1. Over the Atlantic

_Don't hear the lion's roar; it means the teeth are close. Don't hear the tiger growl; it means he's close enough to spring._

If she knew who had first sang that song on the hot, fiery savannah hundred of years ago, she would have demanded to meet this hidden lion just so she could shut it the hell up.

A ray of thick amber sunlight streamed in under the crack of the window cover, making her mocha skin look reddish, like the thick bark of the redwood tree. The air was cold inside the plane, but outside it was already baking, even though it was only sunrise on the continent below her, where the people below were already singing that song.

Like _singing _about it would be much help.

In her personal opinion, ignoring the danger didn't make it go away. Refusing to believe in F's and a certain time of the month didn't keep it from happening. You could pretend all you wanted, but that didn't stop the danger from happening. That had been the argument of Catholics for centuries, and while she herself wasn't strictly of that sector, she had to admit they were right.

Better to be ready for what was to come than just ignore it till its ready to spring and bring you home to a bunch of hungry cubs. If you could hear the tiger growl, good. That meant it was close enough to shoot.

Not that she was into killing endangered species. In fact, she was actually very proactive in that department.

Which brings it all back to the whole danger thing.

And the ignorance.

"Do you need anything, Ms Taylor?" asked a soft, cool feminine voice.

Azira opened her eyes and smiled politely at her personal flight attendant, a woman in a crisp blue outfit and blonde hair underneath her cap that was so shiny it looked wet.

"No thanks."

"Very well." she said, nodded and moved on.

Azira's hand itched in irritation.

The powerful roar of the engines was hardly a hum in her ears, muffled through the thickly padded walls. The seats were thick supple leather and the air smelled like pine nettles. There were three people on staff just to see to any of her personal needs, including the blonde that had done some "business" with her father on an overnight business trip a week ago.

Azira sighed and leaned her head back against the seat.

Soon, it would all be over.

She didn't have to be here. She didn't have to come back ever again, if she wanted to. But there was also another thing she couldn't do, and that was lie to herself.

Azira had never been short on money. Ever since she was born, she was well-off. Then her father, Matthew Taylor, had an airline business take off, and she had gone from two-story house to three-story mansion.

Hello, caviar.

It would have been so easy to pretend after all that. To go along with the goody-goody designer princess airline heiress bimbo act. To just ignore all the problems that were happening in the world, to only worry about staying out of the tabloids and when her custom shoes were coming in the mail. To worry about who had the best pedicure and who had the best boyfriend.

But it just didn't work that way.

Maybe it was in her blood. Maybe it was because she didn't have a model for a mother with more lips than brain cells, maybe it was just some defect in _hers_. But either way, Azira couldn't let go.

She couldn't forget what she had seen on her first trip here when she was four. She couldn't live up to the _look pretty and know nothing _standard.

She _had _to try to help them.

"Back again?" her father had asked. She could see him now, behind her closed lids. His white shirt rolled up to the elbows and his navy tie pulled loose around his neck; his black hair slicked in different directions. It had been a tough day at work.

"Yeah." she had crossed her legs, sitting across from him. A giant oak desk sat between them; an unreachable barrier between father and daughter that she could not have moved if she tried.

Azira didn't know how she felt about that.

He blinked, startled by her response. Then finally, he asked, "Why?"

Azira shrugged, keeping her eyes on his paperweight on his desk. It was a shining orb with a flat bottom that had been a gift from the duke of Russia. "I just want to go back."

He looked at her carefully, his navy eyes portraying nothing. "This is your first year at Harvard." he warned. "You need to be studying, and I know that charity work is important to you-"

"It's more than charity work, dad." Azira growled, her eyes snapping back to him. "It's a _lot _more."

"I know." her father had said, holding out his hands in a peaceful gesture. "I know. But you need to be studying. You need to start your life, and I'm not going to let you miss college to-"

"I'm not going to miss college, dad." Azira cut in. "And first year is over. It's the summer. Let me spend it how I want to."

Her dad sighed, rubbing a hand in his salt and pepper hair. He had a bad lawsuit going on right now with a retractable seat and the fractured hip of a stupid passenger. Honestly, didn't people know _not _to try to fold up the seat while sitting in it?

"Why?" he finally wondered, staring at her with his deep, fathomless eyes that had once captured her mother's heart. When at first she didn't respond, her added in a softer voice, "Doing this every year isn't going to bring her back, Azira."

She met his gaze unflinchingly. "I know."

"Then why are you doing this?"

Azira looked at him carefully. One wrong word, and she would probably be regretting it from here all the way over the Atlantic, just in case a terrorist did happen to wander over the river and take out the only American in the village.

"Do you think it's worth giving up everything just to save one person?" she asked cryptically.

Her father's eyes narrowed. "Depends on the person."

_Don't hear the tiger's growl…_

"Then you wouldn't understand." she said, and stood.

She was at the door, and almost out of it, when Matthew's voice called her back. "You know," he said leaning forward with his hands clasped in front of him, "you can't do everything, Azira. Sometimes you just have to live your life, and stop trying to save everyone else's. Don't let it bother you so much. Take a _break_."

…_it means he's close enough to spring._

"I-" she paused, trying to find the right words to say. To say that it wasn't just going to stop with Mahanji- that the whole world was going through hell right now, that she was moving on to bigger things too. That she was planning to work with terrorism and world policies and…other stuff. For a moment, the only sound was silence, and the television from the next room floating through the hall about a terrorist air bombing in Iran.

"Okay."

And with that, she turned and left, vanishing out of the doorway.

She couldn't tell him now- couldn't tell him that what he was asking was impossible. To live her life and pretend that _theirs _didn't exist. That sometimes she should just forget.

Forgetting about the danger wouldn't save all those people. It wouldn't save all the innocent who had never done anything wrong.

It hadn't saved her mother.

She walked down the hall, and into the open dining room. "Reported bombings increase tenfold in Iran on a U.S base." said the reporter on the screen as she walked past. "Though the government is keeping it under tight wraps, it's only a matter of time…"

"Ms. Taylor?"

Azira's dark eyes opened. "Yeah?" she asked, looking up at a new flight attendant this time, a brunette with a kind face.

"We're here."

Azira sighed heavily and nodded as the attendant walked past her, back up the aisle. She looked at the window cover, at the amber light that still streamed through the tiny crack. Her heart began to quicken. Strengthen. As if new life was flowing into her veins.

She leaned over to the window and pulled the shade up.

And there it was. A giant mass of green and gold, spotted with crystal blue lakes and gushing rivers and giant plains clouded with herds of zebra and wildebeest. Giant forests that stretched all the way to the rocky horizon and the giant golden ball of a sun rising over it all.

Africa.


	2. Mahanji

The airport that the plane touched down in was one of the smallest in the world, and was used to only getting about two or three planes a day, if even then. As a result, all it had was a roof of thatched leaves that was held up by four worn posts that had been faded by endless days in the African sun.

In her mind, that was fine. There was nowhere to loose your luggage.

Not that she had that much with her, anyways. Azira always made sure to pack light whenever she came to Mahanji since she turned fourteen.

How _that _had come around was an interesting story.

As if on cue, something tackled her from behind, followed by a second force that nearly slammed her into the ground.

"Azira! _Azira_!"

Nearly five years ago, after living for months in luxury and the high standards of upper America, then-tween Azira had gotten careless, forgetting how unprotected it is out here in the forest on the edge of the hot savannah. One minute her bags were there, the next they were gone, the heels of two small boys disappearing around the bend of one of the forest paths with her bags on their shoulders.

The next day, they had been brought before her by one of the "policemen" of Mahanji from a nearby village. The boys had denied anything had ever happened, but that wasn't good enough for the man with the cruel eyes who had brought them, and was severely bent on flogging.

_Flogging_, for Christ's sake.

Azira had simply turned away and said they be taken back to their village, where she knew a sick mother would be waiting for them in a hut with no food. The next day, the boys found that a whole basket of fruit had been left outside their door.

Without a note.

It was one of the first decisions Azira had made that led to the world of politics- the world she was keeping secret from her father. No one should have to steal to survive, to keep from being forced to watch their mother die.

Especially when you're only ten.

Azira never had her luggage returned to her. She had never received an apology. But she got something that was probably, in her mind, better than any designer bag she could ever buy; ever since that day, she had never traveled from the airport to Mahanji alone.

Azira nearly doubled over in laughter and reached behind her to pull her two best friends into a tight hug on either side of her- or as much as she could.

"When did you two get so damn tall?" she asked in disbelief, craning her head to look back in surprise at the boy's astonishing height. "Both of you are nearly as tall as some of the trees in the forest now."

Now-sixteen year olds Caleb and Leon looked down at her, twin smiles on their faces. They both wore black basketball t-shirts and cut off shorts. Caleb's jeans were so worn through she though the slightest movement might rip them, and Leon's kakis had too many holes and frays at the bottom for her to count. The former had on the thinnest of flip flops, the latter wore no shoes at all.

"You're just short, _Malika_." said Caleb. _Queen_.

Azira snorted, pushing her dark hair impatiently out of her way. "I'm only a little shorter than you, thanks." she said, her eyes dancing. While many unusual things may have classified Azira, _short _wasn't one of them.

"Are you ready for a walk, Azira?" asked Leon, as he and his brother reached down to grab the handles her two bags while Azira slung her duffle over her shoulder.

"More than ready." she said, eager to be gone, her flip-flop covered feet aching for the soft earth of the forest. "As long as you don't run off with my bags this time." she added with an easy wink.

Leon looked creditably ashamed, while Caleb just grinned down at her.

"What?" Azira asked after a pause, a little unnerved at his staring.

The boy just shook his head and looked away, that stupid grin still on his face.

They asked her many questions as they walked under the protective embrace of the forest's arms; how college was going, how long she planned to stay, what was the news in America? And had she told her father yet? Azira colored a little at that one and stared determinedly ahead.

"You have not told him?" Leon asked in surprise. "Why?"

Azira shrugged. "He…wouldn't understand. I'm going to wait till he notices I am taking a world politics class in college instead of economics before I drop that bomb."

Leon raised his eyebrows, but Caleb just snickered. "I did not think you were one to be afraid of your father, Azira."

"I'm not _afraid_." Azira snapped, tugging on her bag strap. "I'm just-"

A very powerful, very _loud _roar blasted overhead, and so unexpected that Azira's head snapped up and she nearly bolted from the path. She could see nothing from under the leaves of the tight forest trees.

The roar finally faded into the distance and the ground became still beneath their feet, signaling that whatever plane had just passed overhead was gone, and Azira deemed it safe to speak again.

"What the hell was _that_?" she demanded, turning to the boys for an explanation.

Caleb glared up at the canopy. "Planes." he said in a clipped answer. "Jets. They be flying over more often every day. American jets." he added, catching Azira's eye, who held up her hands in an innocent gesture.

"Can you imagine, sitting in one of those?" Leon asked, a light in his black eyes. He had always wanted to be a pilot, Azira remembered.

"Sure. As long you don't fly right over my head." snapped Azira.

Caleb shook his head. "I doubt he would dream of upsetting _you_, Malika."

Azira rolled her eyes and continued on up the path, listening as the animals, after some time, began their unfinished chorus that they had sung since the beginning of time.

"Aza has been waiting for you." said Leon, after some time. "She won't admit it, but she very happy. We heard her humming when we came to stay at Mahanji and wait for you to get here."

Azira raised an eyebrow. "What did you say to her?" she asked, sensing there was more than he was letting on.

Caleb barked out a laugh that echoed throughout the trees, startling a nearby wide-eyed lemur into the depths of the underbrush. "She attack us with her duster." He said, that silly grin on his face again. "Chased us out of her house and onto her porch with it."

Azira laughed. "And let me guess." she said, glancing at him with dancing eyes. "You stood your ground like true men and fought her off?"

Leon gave a disbelieving snort, but Caleb just shrugged his shoulders dismissively, emphasizing the lean muscle beneath his flimsy shirt. As if he _wanted _her to notice.

Azira looked away, back up the path. The way he was acting brought Haden back to mind. She hadn't seen her ex in three months- and gladly. If anything, circumstances lately had proved her theory that love doesn't find everyone. But she pushed back her suspicions about her friend, and concentrated on what was around her instead. The warm air was full of moisture and wonder and _life_, better than anything she had breathed in for a year. The trees above her rustled their leaves with a thousand different shades of jade, and the calls of wild birds and other animals she could never identify and had never seen- except for that one time she and Caleb and Leon had chased an ant eater into the forest- echoed throughout the tight space of the trees.

It felt natural to be out here. Right. Azira loved the advancement of technology, but…there was just something that felt good about being were people were born to be, in her mind.

By the time they finally reached Mahanji, the sun was at its height in the sky, and beginning to slip off the other end fast. Azira's feet were starting to ache from having not walked in so long, and she was starving, but as Caleb and Leon said nothing about it, she was determined not to, either.

There's nothing like being in a third world country to give you a reality check.

Mahanji had always been a sudden sight- one second you are in the middle of the forest, crossing around a bend, and the next a village is right there in front of you, just meters away. As she had gotten older, Azira had learned to recognize the signs that she was getting closer to her African home. The shouts of people you could hear if you strained your ears, the faint smell of smoke, and the giant tree with the twisted trunk that was right in the middle of the path as they approached. Either way, it was still a surprise to see Mahanji all at once, with no announcement, and always would be.

Many small huts- about thirty, at most- stood unevenly over the large clearing of space. They were all dark gray, with the same thatched roofs of dead palm branches. A giant fire that never went out roared in the center of the clearing in a ring of white stones streaked with black soot marks, sending thin gray smoke up into the sky. Children ran all around the paths barefooted, kicking a soccer ball. Giant grass fields stretched out to her left, behind the village. To the right it was bordered by the banks of the river a few hundred yards out. And in front of her, behind the wall of houses, there was more forest several yards away, with a small path that disappeared into its depths. The giant Mount Kilimanjaro rose above it all, in the far background of the forest- a shining silver-blue mountain capped with a jagged white crown.

The King of the Forest.

Seeing it took her breath away every year, and it was a few seconds before she could tear her eyes away and see that Caden and Leon were already a few feet ahead, calling back to her as they entered the village.

Azira gave them a smile, and, with one last glance up at the mountain, followed them.

They attracted a lot of attention as they made their way through the village. Mahanji wasn't even recognized on any national maps of Tanzania, it was so small. So they didn't get a lot of visitors- especially not rich, heiress _American _ones.

It made Azira feel bad every time she saw these people to think about how much she had spent on her hair or her clothes or her father's pool renovation when they had nothing.

But they were so _happy_.

"Azira! Azira!" The children all clustered around her, each one reaching up to try and grab her hand. Had she brought them any new American treats? Would she tell them another American story at the bonfire tonight? Did she have a new movie they could watch on the laptop she had given them all last year?

"_Kwamba kutosha! Kwenda watoto ndani!" _Azira froze in the middle of the crowd of children- who were rapidly giving her more room- at the sound of a familiar voice.

A pair of dark eyes in an even darker face looked at her carefully, hands on round, mature hips, as if trying to decide whether or not she was worth greeting. Azira always hated being looked at like that- by anyone, especially when they found out she was mixed.

Azira didn't look half white. She just looked like a black person who didn't see too much sun- her skin was a dark coppery color, and her hair was black and slightly coarse, yet much more manageable, so she just let it go straight down to her shoulders.

What always gave her away were her eyes. They were still dark, but they had shards of emerald flecked in them, like hazel. That was when people knew something was up, and that maybe the light skin tone wasn't just a lack of vitamin D.

A smile broke out onto the woman's face.

"Come here, _Malika_! Or are you just going to stand there and stare at me all day?" The woman threw her arms open, and Azira was dragged into them.

"_Can't-breath-Lillian_!" Azira gasped, remembering that Lillian, though a great friend, was always able to beat up Caleb as a child.

The woman released Azira, throwing back her head in a great laughed that echoed up and down the village. "Come." she said, taking her hand in her own roughened palm. "Aza is waiting to see you."

Azira was dragged through the village, and noticed that marriage did not seem to have changed her twenty-year old friend. Lillian, dressed in a white blouse with an apron tied around her waist, was still the same girl Azira had gotten into so much trouble with as a young girl.

The thought was a relief.

"Aza!" called out Lillian, and they drew to a halt in front of the largest house in the village- one with grey wooden walls, built on stilts, and with a front porch. It was ancient, but still more modern-looking than the makeshift huts around it. It was a house that had seen great sorrow and pain because of that.

"Aza! Come out, or we are coming in. There is someone here to see you!"

By that time, Leon and Caleb had caught up to them, along with the crowd of children. They were attracting a small group of adults as well.

Azira just had time to notice that Caleb and Leon looked a little worried- and a little frightened- when the front door of the house creaked slowly open.

An old woman shuffled over the threshold, her footsteps small but firm. A face that was darkened by many years under the African sun and weathered by the winds of the savannah looked out at the crowd, and dark, dark eyes that had seen a thousand sorrows and known a thousand pains, and complained not once, met Azira's.

A smile cracked over the face.

Aza made her way down the steps, her bright dress swirling about her ankles and a new light in her eyes. "Come here, my granddaughter." she said, holding out her arms. Azira eagerly embraced her, closing her eyes and breathing in Aza's scent of bonfire smoke, wood, and garden herbs.

"Hello Aza." Azira whispered.

Her only living African family member tightened her grip before releasing her, leaning back to look at her with searching eyes. "_Mungu_, you get more beautiful every year." she said softly, her callused hands tightening on Azira's arms for a moment. "Every year, more like your mother. She would be proud to see you."

Azira smiled, and hoped so.


	3. The Dying Age

The flames of the bonfire leapt towards the dark sky, crackling flames of orange and gold and yellow blinding against the back drop of navy speckled with glowing white.

Azira sighed as the heat of it reached her face, the light of the flames and the shadows they cast wavering back and forth in a never-ending dance on her mocha skin. She kept her hair pulled out of her face in a ponytail, her arms crossed over her knees that were drawn up to her chest. Her chin rested on lean forearms; her eyes were on the stars.

They were so different here than in New York. Not that you really saw them there outside a planetarium, anyways.

She watched a particularly bright one- probably a planet- for a long time, her eyes never able to really focus on the tiny point of light through the tunnel of the sky. If you stare at stars long enough, you notice that. It's slightly disorienting, like you can't really look directly at it at all.

She blinked.

Out here, where the only sounds you could hear was the never-ending, near deafening symphony of crickets and the sound of random wildlife, and the soft, enchanting voices of the people around her ask they spoke in Swahili, about what, she didn't have the heart to tell.

Her mind was thousands of miles away, set on something that happened months ago, in her political science class in Harvard that her father still knew nothing about.

"You live," her professor had said, "in a dying age." He held up a book with the depiction on the front of a tattered American flag with U.S dollar bills littered all over the ground. The students all watched him silently in the pulpit, no one speaking.

_You live in a dying age._

God, no words had ever affected her more.

Professor Santini wasn't one for coddling his students. A man of his late fifties, he had short white hair, long white sideburns, and a thin white beard and mustache that he always shaved off every third Thursday of the month for no apparent reason. He was a tall, thin man; he had played tennis until he turned forty five, and now only stuck to the sport as a mild pastime, and he was one of the smartest people she knew.

For once, she had wished he was wrong.

"People are dying." _Slap_! He threw the book down on a desk, and the student occupying flinched back slightly. "Money…" he took out a dollar bill from his pocket, promptly lit it with the lighter he had on his table as an antique from the 90's, and let it burn, dropping it to the ground, were the ashes smoldered in silence till he ground his loafer in them, scattering them across the floor. "Gone."

The entire room watched in silence.

"Your young generation is sleeping, to lazy and ignorant to even make a difference, and the past generation is too busy lecturing you and holding on to their own damn power, to do anything _about _it!"

Mr. Santini hated half the senators in the White House.

"Rome." he said, whirling around and pressing the button on a small remote he'd had in his suit pocket. The Smart Board lit to life in the front of the room, depicting a picture of the Roman Senate. He glanced back at them. "One of the most powerful, influential, and most hated empires on earth." he turned back to them, pausing as the silence rang in the room. "And what happened to Rome?" He looked around, a dark twinkle in his eyes. "Need I even ask?"

He tossed the remote onto his desk, where it fell with a clatter. "We are Rome." he turned back to them, leaning back on his desk and folding his arms. "We modeled our government after them, our architecture- hell, the only reason why we aren't an empire today is because of _ONE MAN_…" he looked at all of them, holding up a finger, "Who didn't want to be George the First…and because the American people were _awake_."

He stared at them, grey eyes dark and serious. "No longer."

He sat up, hands in his pockets, and began to walk slowly around in front of them as they watched him from above, eyes following his every move. "Our politicians are corrupted, our people no longer care. This nation is in crisis, and no one even seems to realize it. Not the kind of crisis as in- oh, I just lost my job. Not the kind of crisis as in- oh, I know people are hungry. I know. Yeah. Okay.

"You are in a crisis where no one cares what is happening in the White House. You are in the crisis of a slowly collapsing country, a country full of people that act perfectly nice here and then go off and burst into bars in France and restaurants in Spain, demanding that English be spoken and everything be American."

He looked at them all seriously, eyes trained on every face. "People are only concerned here with what they're wearing tomorrow. Who's dating who. When Justin Bebier's next concert is coming out- no direct offense intended- where the next party is…no one cares who is getting elected. No one cares that the world is slowly beginning to hate us for what we've done. No one seems to realize that one of our past presidents flicked the world off publicly, but no, certain news channels have to go and publicize that a blue-collar mayor used incorrect grammar at a press conference."

He looked up at all of them, the sunlight streaming in through the high windows and reflecting off his white hair like snow. "It's the little things." he told them, speaking softly now, but somehow just as clearly. "The little things, like the fact that many don't know half of what goes on in this country, like the fact that radio shows go out and trash people, give out their addresses and spoil the minds of our public, people who don't look around and think for themselves, and then disasters happen."

Azira remembered the attempted assassination of that some democratic politician all those years ago, and the little five year old girl that had been killed instead. Next to her, Carly Sage, one of her closest friends at the college, fidgeted uncomfortably. Her father had been a lawyer for a radio show in a nasty lawsuit for giving out false, degrading information about a certain higher-up in the government, even accusing him of murder. He had disinherited her when he'd figured out she had taken this class, and revealed why.

Kindred soul.

"But we can change that." Santini said softly. He looked up at them with shining eyes the color of platinum silverware. "You are sitting in here, one hundred of the brightest minds in the country, not because you want an A. Not because you want to just waltz through life as a high-paying lawyer. Not because you just want this to look good on a résumé. You are here because you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. Because you want to change all this."

He stared at them level, dark eyes serious and deep. "Is America beyond hope? Certainly not. Can we be what we once were? I certainly hope so. Things have changed- some for the better, much better. We're not in the fake fifties anymore or stuck in the realms of global oblivion. But…we're still in trouble, maybe more so than we ever have been."

He straightened, voice picking up again. "America isn't beyond hope. It's not dead. It's sleeping. And whether or not we pull out of this…depends on how many people you wake up."

He stared at them all for a long moment. No one said a word. At last he straightened, smiling, and turning, grabbed a stack of papers from his desk. "Let's see what you've got."

Someone crashed down into the space next to her, jerking Azira from her thoughts. Leon grinned, teeth bright against dark skin. "You look lonely." he said, crossing his incredibly long legs. "Why the face?"

Azira frowned. "What face?" she asked.

He laughed, smoothing out the crease between her eyebrows with a warm thumb. "That face, _malika_." he said, titling his head as he looked at her. "Before you just seemed…blank. That's why I ask." he shrugged. "You seem to be getting good at this political stuff."

Rule number one- never let them know what you're thinking.

Azira sighed, tilting her head back as she studied the stars. "I've…just got a lot on my mind."

Leon blinked, unwavering.

Azira shook her head, waving a hand. "You wouldn't want to hear about it…trust me. I don't know what to think myself."

He shrugged, shoulders moving beneath his t-shirt. "Okay."

Azira traced a finger in the sand, watching as the tiny particles moved up on either side like tiny mountains. "How is Lillian?" she asked quietly, without looking up.

Leon paused. "I…guess fine." he said, equally as quiet. "I don't know her husband good. I don't live here. But…she seems happy."

Azira glanced up, looking through the shadows to where her friend was standing in a bright yellow shirt, talking with Aza. "I still haven't seen him."

"Hunting trip." explained Leon, glancing over as well. "He left with many of the other men. He be back soon."

Azira nodded.

"Tell me about your friends." he said suddenly. "The ones you wrote to us about."

Azira smiled. She reached around and pulled her iTouch out of her back pocket, unable to resist listening to music here. Her dad had specially ordered it so that it charged by solar, not by electricity. Apple had yet to release them to the general-or any other kind of- public.

"Here." she said, pulling up her pictures. "That's Carly." she pointed to the girl with the long red hair and light green eyes. "Her dad's a lawyer. Her father disinherited her after he saw the course schedule and more importantly why- she's kind of a hippie- but her mom was happy to do anything that upset her dad. She funded her college." Like Carly needed it anyways. The girl was a genius.

"She's…pretty." Leon said finally, the last part little more than a mumble.

Azira laughed. She absolutely adored Leon.

"And that's Beck." she said, pointing to the boy next to her. Leon carefully examined Beck's haircut; black, wavy, and slightly stylized. The scarf around his shoulders. The simple gray shirt; the loafers, the dark skinny jeans that looked more like male model than Justin Bebier. "He…" Leon trailed off.

"He hates snakes, loves trees, Ralph Lauren, and Oregon." said Azira, switching to the next picture. "Don't le the scarf fool you. Beck's had more girlfriends then…well, you get the picture."

She held up the iTouch again. "And that's Jacob." she said, as the face of a boy filled the screen. Jacob's head filled the shot, his wide, light green eyes seemed almost gray, a hood pulled up over his hair, his dark eyebrows and tan skin giving away his heritage before Leon could even ask.

"He came from southern Mexico where things were…bad." Azira said, looking at the picture. "Came to the U.S illegally, got kicked out, came back legally with his dad, started high school with three thousand other kids, then almost got a perfect score on the SAT." she grinned. "Everyone thought he cheated. So he took it again, monitored. And he got a perfect. One of the few kids to get recruited by Harvard that wasn't rich and came from absolutely no background. He's still a little sketchy- you can kind of see it here-" she said, thumb brushing over his hood, "but he's funny as hell ,and a genius. We all love him to death."

"You're all so different." said Leon finally.

Azira smiled, knowing inside that they were. No one on campus seemed to understand the attraction- a rather famous mixed heiress that had more determination than a pro tennis player; a ginger, hippie lawyer's brat that only seemed there half the time and moved like a willow; a boy that had more scarves in his closet and girlfriends in his dating history than anyone cared to count; and a prodigy delinquent that had been featured in Time Magazine and the newspaper for being just exactly who he was.

Honestly, they couldn't explain it either.

But it worked.

The soft beating of a drum started somewhere in the background, slow at first, but steadily picking up in rhythm. They would do this for the next three says- until the men from the hunt came home.

Azira looked back up at the stars that seemed to twinkle down at her. She closed her eyes briefly then, taking a deep breath through her nose. She didn't see the tiny streak of white light, faint as a glimmering thread, that sparkled across the sky before dying in the darkness. Leon watched it fade with fathomless eyes, feeling strange.

_Don't hear the Lion's roar…_

In the very far distance, just under the sound of the drums, he heard the jets rumble in the night. Above Mahanji, the heavens were silent.

* * *

HA! Beat _that_, haitus plot bunnies.

And no, dearest readers, that shooting star at the end is _not_ a Transformer, but cookies to the little bright chaps who were creative enough to think it might be. I have hope for you :)


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